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The Missing Ceremonies

Four rituals that help a team understand each other

The Missing Ceremonies
This book is 90% completeLast updated on 2026-10-16
Charles O'Donoghue

Scrum gives a team ceremonies for the work. Nothing in the calendar looks after the people doing it. This book is the missing set: four short meetings that keep a team understanding each other.

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About

About

About the Book

Every time we talk, we lose some meaning. Small misunderstandings pile up until a working relationship breaks. These four ceremonies repair them first:

- Small Victories: ten minutes a week where people name their progress and someone responds.

- The Culture Box: a charter the team writes when it forms or gets a new lead, and reopens when something changes.

- The Hot Wash-Up: a debrief after a specific event.

- The One-to-One: feedback both ways between a manager and one person.

Part I makes the case from system dynamics and self-determination theory, with a simulation built for the book. Part II is the practice: how to run each ceremony, what goes wrong, and how you know it's working. Open a chapter on Monday and run it on Tuesday.

Written for software and product teams by a manager who ran three of these ceremonies with real teams across Germany, the Netherlands, the UK and Norway.

It is an AI-forward book: a practitioner's knowledge, written with automation, and open about which part is which.

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Self-HelpOrganizational PsychologyCultureBusiness Strategy

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Author

About the Author

Charles O'Donoghue

Charlie O'Donoghue has a curious mind and a habit of asking why people do what they do. He was born in Harare, Zimbabwe, and trained as a scientist, with an MSc in Nanotechnology from Rhodes University. The problems he enjoys most turned out to be human ones.

He has spent his career where business and people meet. He has built teams, led them across Germany, the Netherlands, the UK and Norway, and learned that how a team talks shapes what it can do. He loves psychology and brings it to work, because business and people are inextricably entwined. He thinks that is good news: look after the people, and the work follows.

He is a certified Product Manager and a Solutions Architect at AMPECO. This book grew out of a talk Easee asked him to give on remote caretaking: why his team was handling remote work so well.

Contents

Table of Contents

Dedication

Preface

  1. Where it started
  2. What is missing
  3. What is in it
  4. How to use it
  5. An AI-forward book
  6. How this book was checked
  7. Part I: Ideas, the Emotional Architecture of Work

Chapter 1: A Radical New Picture

  1. One and Three
  2. What One and Three Have
  3. The Ceremony
  4. Chapter Summary

Chapter 2: Why Emotions Matter in Business

  1. The Productivity Engine
  2. The Business Case
  3. Emotions as Infrastructure
  4. A Slot for Listening
  5. Chapter Summary

Chapter 3: System Dynamics: A Mental Model for Business

  1. Making It Dynamic
  2. Feedback Loops
  3. Mapping It to Business
  4. People Are the Missing Piece
  5. Chapter Summary

Chapter 4: Self-Determination Theory and Psychological Needs

  1. The Three Basic Needs
  2. Mapping the Needs to the Ceremonies
  3. Why the Four Work Together
  4. Autopoiesis: The Living Organisation
  5. Chapter Summary

Chapter 5: What the Model Says

  1. The smallest interesting thing
  2. What the simulation does
  3. Result one: timing beats content
  4. Result two: the stock decides, not the event
  5. Result three: the swallowing is what makes it recur
  6. The uncomfortable result
  7. What this changes about the ceremonies
  8. Chapter Summary
  9. Part II: Practice, Meetings That Manage Emotion

Chapter 6: Small Victories

  1. How to run it
  2. What goes wrong
  3. How you know it is working
  4. Why it works
  5. Why this one goes first
  6. Chapter Summary

Chapter 7: The Culture Box

  1. How to run it
  2. What goes wrong
  3. How you know it is working
  4. Why it works
  5. Chapter Summary

Chapter 8: The Hot Wash-Up

  1. How to run it
  2. What goes wrong
  3. How you know it is working
  4. Why it works
  5. Chapter Summary

Chapter 9: The One-to-One

  1. How to run it
  2. What goes wrong
  3. How you know it is working
  4. Why it works
  5. Chapter Summary

Chapter 10: The Inner Game of Feedback

  1. Name It, Then Reprogram It
  2. Being Told You Messed Up Is Good News
  3. Camel, Lion, Child
  4. Practising Being a Child
  5. Chapter Summary

Conclusion: Emotion as a Strategic Asset

  1. What We Have Built
  2. The Backstory
  3. A Word on Peace
  4. An Invitation
  5. Chapter Summary

Appendix A: The Model

  1. What it tracks
  2. What drives them
  3. What it is not

References and Further Reading

  1. Preface
  2. Chapter 2: Why Emotions Matter in Business
  3. Chapter 3: System Dynamics
  4. Chapter 4: Self-Determination Theory
  5. Chapter 5: What the Model Says
  6. Chapter 6: Small Victories
  7. Chapter 7: The Culture Box
  8. Chapter 8: The Hot Wash-Up
  9. Chapter 9: The One-to-One
  10. Chapter 10: The Inner Game of Feedback
  11. Conclusion

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